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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410343">Ballads of Summer</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyremadeflesh/pseuds/fyremadeflesh'>fyremadeflesh</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Gen, Hide and Seek, Modern Era, Pre-Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:14:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,143</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410343</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyremadeflesh/pseuds/fyremadeflesh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For R/L week 2020 - canon/childhood</p>
<p>Lyanna has a sick hiding spot that she's sure Ben and Ned won't discover. Rhaegar just wants to return to his library, but alas, his father's set on dragging him across the country.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aerys II Targaryen &amp; Rhaegar Targaryen, Benjen Stark &amp; Brandon Stark &amp; Lyanna Stark &amp; Ned Stark, Lyanna Stark &amp; Rhaegar Targaryen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ballads of Summer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So the prompt was canon &amp; childhood, so eye took the canon childhood and turned it into an AU lol.</p>
<p>This is set in modern times, and everyone here is a preteen, with Brandon being the oldest at 13yo.</p>
<p>Based on Rhaegar being bookish, and Lya 100% modelled after my baby Arya. This is pre-relationship, and just a kidfic of sorts, so chill.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Carefully shutting the heavy door behind her, Lyanna shuffled into the ancient crypts, taking a torch from the wall to move further into her family's ancient burial site. No one would think to look for her here, and surely she'd win the game.
 </p>
<p>Father and Brandon had gone off to show their guests around the estate, which left her and Ben to play freely for awhile. It had taken little effort to convince Ned to let them out into the gardens, and from there the two siblings had come up with their game. Lya had found Ben thrice - twice in the pool house and once tucked into the patch of hydrangeas <i>by<i> the poolhouse - so it was his turn to find her. By now Ned had been roped into the game she was sure, as Ben hated losing.
 </i></i></p>
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<p>The crypts were damp and dark, the only light coming from the torches the staff was tasked with changing every day. When she was very little, she'd been afraid of this place, afraid of the ghosts who dwelled here and others who were trapped in the dark who might think of her as their ride out, until Brandon had convinced father to let them camp by their great-grandfather's tomb every other Friday night the year she turned five.
 </p>
<p>Her brother's fearlessness and carefree demeanour had been infectious, and Lyanna had reasoned that if Brandon wasn't scared, she wouldn't be either. She'd come to love her fathers of old (though she wondered why the women weren't buried here) and their rusted swords. It was here that she'd had her first lessons in swordsmanship, hacking away at a training dummy Brandon had carried down for her without father's knowledge. The giant direwolves with their pointed stares stood guard then, as they did now; they were but sentinels watching over her - her protectors, her brothers, for she herself was a she-wolf, with sharp fangs and claws that matched theirs.
 </p>
<p>With sure steps Lyanna descended into the underground crypts, singing a tune her mother had taught her. Jumping up onto her grandfathers tomb, Lya sat back and got comfortable, waiting for her brothers to find her.
 </p>
<p>//
 </p>
<p>"I don't know the property well enough to be tasked with this," Rhaegar thought, climbing down from the heart tree he'd scrambled into looking for the Stark girl. He'd torn his sleeve on one of the twisted branches, but counted himself lucky in that after he fell face first-first into the soil by the gate, tripping over the bone white roots.
 </p>
<p>Mr Stark had been showing them their glass gardens when Ned Stark had arrived in a flurry. He'd been playing a game with his siblings, he recounted, but it had been more than an hour since his sister had hidden away. As the search was picked up by other members of the Stark household, Rhaegar's father had nudged him, telling him to join the Starks combing the property for her.
 </p>
<p>While he'd initially just been tailing the Benjen, the boy had vanished sometime after Rhaegar had climbed into the heart tree, and this rate, he'd get lost too without a guide.
 </p>
<p>Rhaegar shouted her name in the godswood a few more times before starting his way back to the main house. Everyone was spread out across the area, from staff combing the front garden, to her father searching the neighbourhood. Lyanna Stark was yet to be found.
 </p>
<p>Sighing again, Rhaegar turned his face up to the sun. It was cold here for some reason, but maybe he only thought that because the house had been so warm. Sun, silence and winter winds - he might have found his dream spot. Sighing, Rhaegar dragged himself back to the gate, mindful of the roots.
 </p>
<p>As he exited the godswood and trudged towards the house, the forest caught his eye. Whenever he and Arthur had played hide-and-seek, Rhaegar had stuck to hiding in the woods, maybe Lyanna Stark did the same. Figuring there was no harm in checking, Rhaegar made his way towards it.
 </p>
<p>"Hey!" Someone called from behind him, just as rhaegar had started climbing the hill. Pausing for a brief moment, he turned, finding Ned Stark on his trail. "It's not safe to go alone in there."
 </p>
<p>"Oh? More grumpkins and snarks?" Rhaegar humoured, his smile falling when Ned's expression remained stoic. "Sorry."
 </p>
<p>"It's fine, just - you'll get lost going on your own. There's nothing out there but endless woods."
 </p>
<p>"Maybe she went in there, climbed a tree and fell asleep in it? It won't hurt to check, you can text your brother and tell him to come find us if anything happens."
 </p>
<p>Ned nodded, sidling up beside Rhaegar with his phone out. Their walk was quiet, Ned seemed too worried to even make conversation. He was so unlike his brother, and for that Rhaegar was secretly thankful.
 </p>
<p>"We can search around the woods, check the trees and bushes. There's a river further North, but I doubt Lya would go that far," Ned said, his frown becoming more pronounced. "Don't you go too far either, I don't know the woods as well as I used to, and I don't want you lost on my watch too."
 </p>
<p>Hesitating, Rhaegar raised his hand, patting the boy on his shoulder in an attempt at comfort. "Hey, I'm sure we'll find her soon. Let's make the most of the daylight and do our best to search the area."
 </p>
<p>Ned gave no answer, nodding curtly instead, and then he was off. Rhaegar took that as his sign to start looking too, craning his neck to search the trees.
 </p>
<p>"Lyanna!" He called out again, removing his hands from around his mouth. The Starks had a lot more property than originally thought, and theirs was much bigger than most ancestral homes he'd visited. Had Arthur been here, they could have made a game of it - racing through trees to cover more ground.
 </p>
<p>Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a building a little ways away from where he had stopped. The front seemed freshly built, with the Stark words adorned above the doorframe. Making his way over to it, Rhaegar noted the string marking off the area. Hesitating before the door, for like Ned Stark this building was cold and serious, Rhaegar pushed against the doors, happy to see the inside was lit up with torches. Leaves littered the interior, making Rhaegar more sure that Lyanna, or at least someone else, had recently been here.
 </p>
<p>They interior was probably the older than any other building on the grounds besides the main house, but even that had been renovated and updated as the centuries came and went. Tucked into a nook beyond the various shrines and burning candles was a door, and beyond that, stairs descending into the well-lit crypts. Rhaegar took a moment to wonder if Ned would be mad at him going down here, before shrugging and wrenching a torch from one of the walls and making his descent. If Rhaegar were to find Lyanna, Ned wouldn't care where he found her.
 </p>
<p>Trailing a hand down the railing, Rhaegar was surprised to find only a thin layer of dust on it, probably freshly fallen. The underground crypts were well-maintained with fresh torches lighting the way and no signs of neglect. The pillars and ceiling seemed to have been redone and the floors recobbled, but it was the state of the gigantic direwolves and the men they guarded that surprised him most. While a few statues were noseless or had lost a hand or part of their sculpted clothes, most were perfectly preserved. He'd once read about the burial customs of the North in his great-grandfather's history books, and particularly that of the Starks, and one of the society magazines his mother read had recently reported that Rickard Stark was having the collapsed parts of the crypts excavated with the help of the Citadel.
 </p>
<p>Every lord (as they were styled in times of old) - and now head of the family - was buried in these crypts, their bones laid to rest with a statue of themselves and a direwolf standing guard. The Stark crypts ran for hundreds of miles it seemed, so if Lyanna Stark was down here, Rhaegar only hoped that she was close by.
 </p>
<p>Pausing briefly to switch his torch with one of the fresher ones on the wall, Rhaegar didn't expect to be attacked, nearly leaping out of his skin as <i>something<i> pounced on him, dragging him down to the floor. Fear gripped his heart, and for a few moments he tried to fight back only for his brain to finally catch up and realise the person who had attacked him was smaller than he was.
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<p>He went still suddenly. "Lyanna? Are you Lyanna?"
 </p>
<p>The person stopped their wild attack, digging boney knees into his belly. "Who are you? Are you a ghost?"
 </p>
<p>"Wha-no! I'm Rhaegar. Rhaegar Targaryen. I came looking for you."
 </p>
<p>"Rhaegar? Why'd you come looking for me?" She asked, not letting up. Rhaegar could feel where bruises would develop later, but thought it best to say nothing.
 </p>
<p>"Your brother Ned and I came looking for you in the woods, you've been gone for hours."
 </p>
<p>"Ned? Oh, that means I've won the game!" She cheered, standing up. "I knew they wouldn't come looking for me here."
 </p>
<p>"We should go back and set your family's hearts at rest - and find Ned before he thinks I'm lost too."
 </p>
<p>"Yeah," she agreed, patting her wild hair out of her face. "Did you think I was a direwolf? I've been working on my growl."
 </p>
<p>"I thought you were a ghost too," Rhaegar replied, heading back to the stairs. "Why didn't you come out sooner? Everyone was worried."
 </p>
<p>"I didn't know it had been so long," Lyanna complained, marching up the stairs. "Time passes so differently down here. I was sure Brandon would be able to find me though."
 </p>
<p>Rhaegar felt like laughing, this half-wild girl was not concerned with whatever punishment awaited her, instead gloating in her achievement. He wished he had half her spirit to stand up to his father. "It's the same for me when I'm in my library, I get so lost in the books that I don't remember time is passing in the real world too."
 </p>
<p>"Are you bookish? I never expected that from a Targaryen heir. Catelyn Stark says you're the best jouster in your division."
 </p>
<p>"No way, not when Arthur enters the lists too."
 </p>
<p>"Arthur Dayne? I said that too. He's the best sportsman of our age. He might even take Brandon down in rugby one day. But she didn't want to hear it because she has a crush on Brandon. Which, eww."
 </p>
<p>Rhaegar chuckled, shaking his head. After getting back to where he and Ned had split up, he scanned the area for any sign of him, only to jump when Lyanna called out for her brother. She was as loud and talkative as her brother, but definitely more bearable.
 </p>
<p>In the light of the sun, Rhaegar could see the resemblance between Lyanna and her brothers, they all had the same eyes. He was taller than her, but her stature promised more growth in the future.
 </p>
<p>Ned came jogging their way a short time after, red-faced and out of breath. Lyanna gave him a sugar sweet smile before grasping both their hands and dragging them back in the direction of the main house.
 </p>
<p>Her brother stared at her incredulously after Rhaegar recounted where he'd found her, and seemed more angry at himself for not checking there first. "Lyanna you can't just disappear like that!"
 </p>
<p>"Well no one told me I <i>couldn't<i> hide there. Next time just make a rule about that."
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<p>Ned rolled his eyes, something Rhaegar hadn't expected from him and it took everything in him to not burst out in laughter.
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<p>Their arrival at the house had everyone pouring out and running towards her, Brandon with a scowl on his face and Mrs Stark near tears.
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<p>As sharp words of chastisement and relief rang out, Rhaegar stepped away from them, tugging on his torn sleeve. His father motioned him over from where he stood, and Rhaegar went silently.
 </p>
<p>"What happened to your clothes?"
 </p>
<p>"I accidently fell down in the woods," he said, turning to stare at the retreating figures of Mrs Stark and the wolf-girl.
 </p>
<p>Brandon stopped beside him, mussing Rhaegar's hair. "Ned says you found her, thank you."
 </p>
<p>"Is that true Rhaegar?" His father asked, eyebrow raised in suspicion.
 </p>
<p><i>Anything I say or don't say is a slight to him,<i> Rhaegar thought, suppressing his eye roll. "Yes, father. The Stark girl was hiding in the crypts," he said as explanation, racking his brain trying to recall an old story. Perhaps he'll compose a song for a Stark princess of old, or for a wild she-wolf that haunted the crypts.
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